Professional Development Seminar

Catalog description

This seminar is required for all first-year PhD students. It is designed with three primary purposes. The first is to provide the nuts-and-bolts in navigating the school and the University in the first year of study. The second is to expose students to the research expertise and scholarly career of the faculty (in an informal manner). The third is to provide students with an opportunity to sharpen their research interests by developing a brief research statement. Throughout the year, students also will have chances to lead the sessions on topics that are important to the learning process to cultivate students’ leadership skills. The overarching goals of this seminar are to immerse students in a learning environment with motivation, to get to know different trajectories in becoming an independent scholar, and to have growing confidence in their own research interests. This seminar thus provides students with the scholarly-related competencies and skills for successfully earning the PhD degree and becoming a promising young scholar.